


A Portrait of the Pussens as a Kosher Cat

by becauseitwasreal



Category: Ulysses - James Joyce
Genre: idk what i am doing with my life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-06
Updated: 2017-02-06
Packaged: 2018-09-22 12:40:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9607988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becauseitwasreal/pseuds/becauseitwasreal
Summary: Because everyone needs the fourth episode of Ulysses from the perspective of the cat. Or at least I did...





	

**Author's Note:**

> Not sorry.

It wasn’t exactly that I was a herbivore. Not at all, of course. I liked the occasional sardine, or some of the scraps of meat he left me. But as he contemplated his regular Thursday morning breakfast of fatjuicymeaty kidney, I had to admit that, overall, I found his unusual taste rather disgusting. I knew he wasn’t too attached to all the rules etc. etc., and that his eating habits wouldn’t keep kosher if his life depended on it, but the kidney-devouring mornings were a level at which I lost my basic comprehension of my human’s mind. Unfortunately for me, it seemed I was stuck with him, including his love for the inner organs of beasts; thick giblet soup, nutty gizzards, stuffed roast heart, liverslices fried with crustcrumbs, fried hencods’ roes. He ate them all, and all I could do was sit there, mkgnaoing in disgust at his lack of principle.

I walked stiffly round a leg of the table with tail on high. “Feed me, you uncultured swine,” I said, on a not altogether unfriendly tone, even if I felt particularly grumpy towards my owner’s dietary preferences this morning. And please please please just let it be something a regular human being would actually feed to a cat this time, I thought, but I didn’t say it. There was no need to be rude

“O, there you are,” Mr Bloom said, turning from the fire.

“Oh hurray, you found me,” I said. “Now if you will please get me my breakfast. The woman can wait. You’ve fed her last night, while you haven’t given me any attention in what I have counted to be exactly twenty hours, nine minutes and eeleven seconds.” I had to admit that that may have at least partly been my own fault, for I had been desperately trying to huntcatchkill the mouse that was hiding in the cupboard of their neighbour’s daughter’s small house, which was a few blocks away. Then again, I wouldn’t have been so desperate to catch that bothersome little thing if Poldydear had managed to get me something decent for breakfast.

I began to get impatient. I tried to seduce him with my elegant black shapes. Feed me, pet me. If I bite of your fingers one by one will you be more willing, will you comply? Remember if you do not I will punish you. So now you know what I will do to you, you naughty boy, if you do not feed me. You call me stupid. I understand what you say better than you do. I understand all I want to. Vindictive, cruel is my nature. I know your secrets, Leopold Bloom, I know them all.

Finally he bends down, hand on his knees. “Milk for the pussens.”

“That is not what I want!” I cried. Don’t hiss. Hiss and he’ll never get you what you want. “Give me some food, you imbecile.” Don’t bite the hand that feeds you, my mother used to say. I wasn’t sure I agreed on that. Right now eating his hand seemed like a good alternative to my usual eight o’clock breakfast on the cat food my human bought for her in the local store. The milk would be good, but I knew he could do better.

“Afraid of chickens she is,” my human said mockingly. What a jerk. Did he really have to bring up that little incident? That was one time. I ran into that little bastard and nearly got my eyes pecked out. I could remind him of some fun incidents as well. “Afraid of the chookchooks. I never saw such a stupid pussens as the pussens.” Don’t you use that voice on me. That voice you use when you think it necessary to humiliate me but do it in such a tone of voice that it seems as if you are just being nice. Well, you are not fooling me, sir. I made a distinctively furious noise in the hope he would catch up on it. I wasn’t wasting any more words on that human, and started to mew plaintively instead. I could tear up his pretty trousers, but decided against it. I knew my human and the woman had a funeral today, and I wasn’t about to disrespect the deceased. Paddy used to pet me in the streets whenever our paths crossed (which was very often in the small Dublin of 1904), the good man. I showed my human my milkwhite teeth and narrowed my dark eyeslits with greed till my eyes were green stones.

The human seemed to catch up on my current displeasure to at least some degree, pouring warmbubbled milk on a saucer and setting it slowly on the floor. “About time!” I cried, running to his lap. That little distraction had done it, of course. I had now lost my human’s attention, and he, thinking I was satisfied, left me alone with the woman.

For a single second I contemplated going upstairs to beg the woman for food, but I knew she wouldn’t get up anytime soon, and certainly not for me. My human at least seemed to like me, even if he was an irregular and unreliable supplier of my wishes, whether it regarded food or drink or anything else for that matter – he petted me when he came home from work, while she just looked upon me as vermin.

After what seemed like a century, I heard the door, and saw his hat take its usual place on the peg. Took him long enough. Still no food. Kidney.

He was talking to the woman. Why did he bother with her. I was about to interrupt their fun little conversation to tell the human that I really really needed some food now or I would consider eating his precious kidney as a replacement, when I smelled the smell of burn. “The kidney!” I cried suddenly, but of course my human didn’t hear me. No, it took a comment from the woman for my human to discern the hideous smell his prized possession had been creating.

Shouldn’t have threatened. Now paying the price. The burned flesh of the kidney was flung at me. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to on such a deep emotional level that I almost decided that living on milk for another day would definitely not kill me. But I was hungry, and so it happened that 16 June 1904 became the day that I stopped keeping kosher.


End file.
